Happy Halloween! Google Serves Up Interactive Doodle

Google served up a spooky doodle on Wednesday to mark a Halloween that has unfortunately delivered more tricks than treats in the wake of Hurricane Sandy's devastating path of destruction across the eastern United States.

Google served up a spooky doodle on Wednesday to mark a Halloween that has unfortunately delivered more tricks than treats in the wake of Hurricane Sandy's devastating path of destruction across the eastern United States.

Millions left without power or Internet access probably won't see the interactive doodle. Eerily enough, this year's Halloween offering features a row of narrow apartment buildings reminiscent of New York City's tightly packed brownstones, their stoops festooned with jack-o-lanterns, skeletons, and creepy spiders. Clicking on doorways and garbage cans reveals ghosts, screeching black cats, and other spooky apparitions, all while a spooky soundtrack of a lightly whistling wind plays in the background.

Meanwhile, Microsoft, proprietor of the rival Bing search engine, appears to have jumped on the doodle bandwagon as well. On Wednesday, the Bing home page also featured a haunted house with clickable boxes that took searchers to various Halloween-themed destinations, such as a page featuring pet costumes and an online video of the Peanuts animated special It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

Google has gained a devoted fan base for its steady stream of clever doodles, which often commemorate famous historical figures and events at irregular intervals but also tend to turn up on major holidays like Halloween. The spooky season has been particularly fertile ground for the search giant, which probably hit a Halloween high note with last year's time-lapse doodle featuring Google employees carving giant pumpkins into the familiar letters of the Google logo.

The current doodle also spells out "Google" via an array of unlockable monsters, ghosts, and floating eyeballs revealed behind their respective doorways.

There may be welcome news on the Halloween front for kids fearing their trick-or-treating has been derailed by Sandy—there's been talk in many affected communities of delaying Halloween night until such time as clean up from the hurricane makes it more feasible for all the little ghosts and goblins to hit the streets in the pursuit of sweet, sweet candy.

Damon Poeter got his start in journalism working for the English-language daily newspaper The Nation in Bangkok, Thailand. He covered everything from local news to sports and entertainment before settling on technology in the mid-2000s. Prior to joining PCMag, Damon worked at CRN and the Gilroy Dispatch. He has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle and Japan Times, among other newspapers and periodicals.
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